


An Addiction Not Beat

by wereworm



Series: the ocean behind the door [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Pining, Gen, Introspection, Starvation, Suicidal Thoughts, Unhealthy Relationships, Vomiting, big of heart dumb of ass, canon divergence after MAG 128: Heavy Goods, i want jon and helen to be friends, i wanted to do one of those starvation fics, i wrote this after mag 128 so ignore inconsistencies with canon pls, jon sims the bad decisions man, lemme know if anything else needs to be tagged, like so much introspection, the jon and martin is pre-slash, they in love though, this is an au where the magnus archives people aren't complete dicks, this one refers to j&e because ew
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22333261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wereworm/pseuds/wereworm
Summary: After forcing Breekon to tell his story, Jon and Basira figure it's safer for him to stay in his office until they find a way to deal with his unique problem. Unfortunately, what Jon tries to convince himself is just an addiction akin to smoking, turns out to be much more than that as he's forced to deal with the fact that he came back from the dead as just another monster.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard & Jonathan Sims, Helen & Jonathan Sims, Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: the ocean behind the door [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1610548
Comments: 53
Kudos: 343





	An Addiction Not Beat

**Author's Note:**

> hey everyone, i started this as a lil thing to tie me over to my big tma fic and it got a bit out of control. just a tad. rip me i guess. anyway, 5k turned into 11k and here we are so enjoy (:

Jon is hungry. There’s nothing unusual about that, he’s been hungry before. His grandmother, grateful as he is for her, hadn’t looked after children for many years before he came to her, and had seemed to have forgotten that children ate a lot. She’d never left him intentionally hungry, he knows she never would have done that, but Jon had lost count of the number of times he had gone to bed still hungry because it was “impolite to ask for seconds when you didn’t even help cook”. Years have passed and while a lot of Jon’s childhood has faded with time, he remembers the hunger that would claw at his stomach when he’d tried to get to sleep at night like it was yesterday. The hunger that Jon feels now is similar to that but it’s also so much more than it.

It’s a dull ache that’s everywhere in his body. It’s his heart beating erratically and far too quickly to be healthy. It’s the heaviness in his limbs as he reaches his arm out across his desk to pick something up. It’s the bright light that flares up before his eyes when he turns around too quickly. Individually, none of these are terrible and even together they’re fairly mild compared to some of the other things Jon has suffered through. What’s a trembling hand compared to the burning agony of Jude’s grasp? To the burrowing of worms beneath flesh? Still, the hunger is incessant, and the reminders of its presence are constant.

Casting a furtive glance to his office door, Jon entertains the thought of getting up to test the lock. There’s no point though; he remembers Basira locking it from the outside when she’d helped him into the room. Checking it now would just attract her attention and Jon does not want that. She’d think he’s trying to escape, and she’d think he’s not trying hard enough. As if everything he had done to Breekon had been his doing and that it had all been done willingly. As if he is alright with what he’s becoming. He’s considered trying to explain it to Basira, telling her that it wasn’t just a choice he had made. He can picture the way she’d nod sympathetically but her eyes would stay cold and accusing and she’d keep referring to his hunger as an addiction. An addiction.

Jon is a smoker; he knows what an addiction is. He knows the craving and the _itch_ , and he knows that what he’s feeling is not that. Smoking, for all the horrors of withdrawal, was an addiction Jon had beat by going cold turkey for a couple of weeks. It hadn’t been the smoothest recovery – he’d been irritable and moody the entire time – but he’d done it, and he’d done it quickly. He hadn’t even found himself craving a smoke once for years until he accepted the archivist job.

He’s tried that with the statements. Going cold turkey that is. Within a few days he’d fainted halfway through a particularly thrilling game of checkers against the computer. He must’ve slid off his chair because when he woke up, he was lying on his side on the floor. The floorboards, usually cold, had warmed up beneath his cheek so he knew he’d been there a while. Trying to sit back up, he’d barely managed to flip to his back before his stomach was revolting and he was lunging for the rubbish bin. No one had been by with food that day and he hadn’t felt thirsty, so nothing had come up, but he still sat there gagging and heaving for what felt like years. No one came by to check on him but he could sense Melanie and Basira outside at their desks, quietly working. Eventually, he collapsed back onto the floor, unable to muster the energy to drag himself back onto the chair, not that his legs would have supported him up anyway.

He’s not fully sure of how long he’d stayed there. Melanie stopped by once with dinner and, taking one look at him sprawled on the ground, started laughing. It hadn’t been a nice laugh, more a bitter bark than actual humour. He felt too empty to feel any shame, but she had already left before he could ask for help getting up.

He did eventually get up, though. He’d felt himself getting weaker and weaker and his hand had slowly begun inching its way across the floor almost unconsciously. He’d grabbed a statement and, even before he could read it, the familiar click of the tape recorder turning on had helped alleviate some of the pain.

The statement had helped. It had restored enough of his energy that he could pull himself back onto the chair. The food Melanie had brought had gone off and something grey was growing along the smooth edge of the ceramic rim. With a sigh, he had picked up the plastic cutlery and scraped the whole lot off into his bin. They didn’t even trust him with a real knife. It was better for him to focus on that than the fact that he’d gone without food for so long and was still able to move around his office easily. He’d tried to pretend that him throwing the food out was so that washing the plate wouldn’t be too gross but he knew that he just didn’t want the others to know about his change of diet.

After he had used the knife to scrape off the last bit of potato, he had placed the plate as far away from himself as he could on the table and pulled a stack of unread statements towards himself. They helped him more than any of the food Melanie had brought him had. While each one of them had filled him up just that little bit more, they all still lacked substance. Like drinking water, they filled his stomach but had none of the nutrition required to actually satiate his hunger.

He had briefly considered telling the others but he knows they’d just think he’s making excuses. He knows that they already think of him as a monster, that he’s not Jon Sims anymore but rather just the Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute. He can’t even find it within himself to disagree with them. Jon Sims would not have let himself be turned into a monster, he would have stopped reading the statements months ago, and, when the cravings got too strong he would have burnt them or shredded them or done something to get rid of the temptation for once and for all.

Jon, the Jon that he actually is, trembles at the thought of destroying even just one of the statements, the memory of Gerry’s page burning haunting him still. It’s not even the pain that scares him the most, it’s the loss of knowledge, and that in itself is frightening, too. He knows the effect making statements has on the people who come to this place, but he can’t bring it in himself to care about them. This Jon doesn’t think twice about those people past a cursory curiosity in what became of them since they made their statement.

Are they still out there? Do they keep trying to live a normal life, haunted by an encounter with the truth? Are they even still alive? He hopes so. Are they scared of dying? Jon is. It’s why he is the way he is now. Despite everything that’s happened to him since he’s gotten this job, Jon still doesn’t want to die. Even though it may be the easy way out – the only way out if Elias is to be believed – Jon is terrified of dying. It must make him seem so weak. When he was in that coma, he knew that he had a choice. He could have stayed human. All of this wouldn’t have happened if he’d just stayed human.

Sure, he would have died as well, but what he would have died a person. In the end, Jon’s insistence on staying as human as possible had been built on weak foundations. He’d rather be a monster than dead. But now he has to pay the price of being what he is and it’s just _so hard_. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s a child bumbling about in an adult’s world trying to make sense of words he hasn’t heard before and people he’s never met.

Elias would understand, though. He would know everything Jon needs to know to survive, to thrive even. But he’s still locked away and even if he wasn’t, Elias is a major fan of learning on the job, which, as far as Jon knows, has never ended well for him. He’s never told Jon anything past the bare minimum required for him not to cark it the second he left his office, and even then, there was no guarantee. Would he even be able to trust anything Elias told him? Jon had trusted Elias once, even liked him, but he’s since proved himself unworthy of Jon’s kindness or faith. Even before his betrayal, Jon had known that Elias was always more patient with him than he was with anyone else; he had always shown Jon his best side.

Afterwards, Elias’ worst crime against Jon had been an absence of action. He may have shown Melanie her father’s death and trapped everyone here, but to him, Elias just hadn’t found him quickly enough. It doesn’t stop him from hating Elias, from feeling betrayed and hurt, but it’s comforting to know that he isn’t actively trying to kill him. Jon’s not sure he can say the same about anyone else in the Archives.

It grates. The thought that even those who should be his friends would sooner see him dead. Out of all the situations to bond with people, it seems like being trapped in what’s essentially a massive shrine with ridiculously high death rates would be one that would be rather effective at making people come together. Instead, everyone else has banded together as the archival assistants while Jon lurks at the periphery. Not monstrous enough to be grouped as an enemy but not human enough to be trusted. He can’t do much to change how they see him. He can only try and keep himself as human as possible for as long as possible until they find a cure for his affliction or maybe even a way to control it.

Currently, Jon is at the whim of the Beholding: he gains knowledge when the Eye deems to share it and he doesn’t have the ability to stop it when it does. Control is out of his reach, but reading statements brings it just that little bit closer. So, he just sits there at his desk and reads statement after statement. As many as he can to quench the hunger so he doesn’t feel the hunger claw too deeply in his stomach. Maybe if he reads enough then he’ll be human enough to finally be let in on whatever Basira’s planning at the moment.

The last time she’d Jon know anything about her plans had been when she had locked him in here. After taking Breekon’s statement, Basira had helped him down to kitchenette in the basement. Her arm, warm against his back, had been surprisingly strong considering she didn’t lead the same athletic life she had when she was still on the force. Melanie had already been in there, drinking a cup of tea. A dash of milk with two sugars. Jon had tried not to cringe at the thought of it; tea should be served black and anything else was a travesty. Martin may have also been there, but Jon couldn’t see him and even if he was it would have only been a technicality for how much he had contributed. The three of them had tried to brainstorm solutions, though Jon had kept quiet for most of it, letting Basira and Melanie lead the conversation. Even though neither of them had voiced it, Jon knew they had considered just killing him. He wouldn’t blame them for it, couldn’t, as he’d considered it himself. He’d even held a kitchen knife up against his throat and had begun to press in when he remembered the ease with which Elias had replaced Gertrude and just how many people Elias had to pick from to take over for him, should he die.

It was strange that Jon hadn’t thought of himself in those moments, but instead of the poor sod who’d take on his job. Tim would have found it hilarious; Jonathan Sims, Head Asshole of the Magnus Institute thinking about someone other than himself for once. Well, he’d have found it funny if he’d even believed Jon. God, he missed Tim. Despite how he’d acted ever since Prentiss, he’d still been important to Jon. He’s not sure how much of what he felt for Tim was Jon caring about him as another person and how much was the Beholding feeling protective over its archival assistants. Not that it matters now – Sasha’s dead, Tim’s dead, and who knows how long it will be before Martin dies. It just goes to show that even though the Beholding seems possessive over its employees, it doesn’t seem to actually care about any of them. Each and every one is easily replaced, even Jon. Maybe that’s why it hasn’t done anything to help him.

He’s been in his office for weeks and the Beholding has just left him here. He’s been reading statements nonstop for days and while it’s helping a little bit Jon can’t help but worry about what happens when he runs out. Will the Eye do anything then, or will it just keep watching as he withers away? It would make sense to leave him; no matter what happens, the others know Jon and they know what he can do, a new archivist would be a clean slate. With a sigh, Jon pushes away from the desk. Grabbing the tapes of today’s recorded statements, he shuffles slowly to the door and places them in the tub. Basira will be by tonight to pick them up and take them somewhere. He wonders whether she’s storing them properly or whether she’s keeping them unsorted and in random boxes like Gertrude did. He considers pursuing the thought more, but he’s just too hungry to concentrate.

*

It turns out that he doesn’t have to worry about running out of statements, because, after a week or so of reading entire drawers of statements a day, Basira and Melanie come to visit. It’s a short thing and they don’t bother saying anything to him as they enter. Melanie quickly crosses the room before he can even greet her and slips around behind him to hold a knife to his throat and slap a hand over his mouth. Following her, Basira comes in with one of those moving trolleys with several boxes on top. Jon watches as she starts emptying everything from his cabinets into the boxes and a feeling of nausea wells up within him. He feels his palms start getting sweaty as he’s faced with all of his statements being taken away from him.

 _Shit, shit, shit._ What’s he going to do now? The statements had only just been keeping him sane and now he’s not going to have anything. His breathing starts to pick up and he tries to stop from gasping after he feels Melanie’s blade press tighter against his throat. He can feel blood bead up along the edge and slowly begin trickling down his throat.

 _In. One, two, three, four five. Out. One, two, three, four, five._ Jon’s still trying to get his breathing rate back to normal when Basira wheels the full trolley out. She comes back shortly after, the boxes still there but empty once more. His hands start trembling as she starts filling the boxes again. By the time she’s done and the entire office is empty of any statements, his breathing is back to normal and his hands are tightly clasped in his lap to stop the shaking. She wheels it out again and this time when she comes back in, she comes without the trolley. She walks over to him with quick, silent steps and halts on the other side of the desk. She leans down slightly, planting her hands on the desk, and looks at him straight in the eyes.

“Melanie, let him go,” She says.

Jon’s never thought much about anyone’s voice but as Basira addresses the woman behind him, he could almost weep with how beautiful the sound is. Smooth and melodic, he wants her to keep talking and talking, to not leave him alone in the silence again. He turns the words over and over in his mind, trying to commit the sounds to memory. He almost doesn’t notice as Melanie pulls the knife away from his throat but he does notice the way she quickly moves back, as if she’s afraid he’ll attack her. A part of him wants to laugh; what could he do? After all this time, he still doesn’t know how to throw a punch properly. The part of him that doesn’t laugh, feels pleased. Pleased that she recognises his power and is wary of what he can do.

“Jon?” Basira calls out.

He looks to her, focusing on her eyebrows. She doesn’t like it when he looks her in the eye, none of them do. He always sees too much and it’s harder to control his powers when he does. _What has she been doing while I’ve been in here? Has she taken over as the Archivist in everything but title?_ He feels his power building beneath his skin, a slight pressure behind his eyes. He bites his lip and closes his eyes. When he opens them again, he immediately looks anywhere other than her eyes. Her mouth is set tightly and her skin looks a shade or two lighter than usual. Her headscarf, usually wrapped around her head in a way that seems both elegant and practical, is just roughly tied, a knot at the base of her head and one of the ends of the cloth hangs limply over her shoulder. She seems tired.

“Jon?”

There’s concern in her voice and Jon forces a tired smile at her.

“Basira.”

She smiles back at him, small but sincere.

“You’ve been recording a lot of statements, Jon.”

There’s something odd about the way she keeps repeating his name. It reminds him a bit of Nikola but it’s helping him concentrate on what she’s saying, so he figures he can’t complain. Not that he would. The way it makes his skin crawl and sends his heart rate rocketing up doesn’t matter because Basira is here. He’s missed her so much.

“Yeah,” He eventually replies.

“The point of you being in here, Jon, is for you to beat this problem and if you keep reading so many statements you’re not going to be beating anything.”

“Yeah,” he murmurs.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says a bit more loudly.

“I don’t mean to be cruel but you need to stop. Reading all these statements isn’t fixing anything, Jon.”

He doesn’t say anything.

She sighs and then continues, “I’ll bring you a statement once a week, and we’ll wean you off from there.”

Panic shoots through Jon. When he’d tried to go without statements, he hadn’t even lasted half a week before things got too bad. There’s no way he’ll survive an entire seven days without reading one. He opens his mouth to protest, to try and explain but Basira cuts him off.

“I know it’ll be hard, Jon. It’s hard for us, too. Keeping you locked up in here, no one wants to do that. So please, Jon, stay strong and come back to us. We could use your help.”

The words die in his throat. He reaches out to her, resting a hand on hers where it’s still on the desk.

“I’ll do my best, I promise.”

She grins at him and it’s so reminiscent of the way she used to smile when he’d told a good joke that something in his heart clenches. He hasn’t seen her smile like that in a long time, and even this smile is nothing but a pale mockery of the way she used to smile. They’re all suffering, not just him. He’ll have to try better for them. He’s the Archivist and they’re his assistants, he needs to protect them and he can’t do that from his office.

“I promise,” he repeats, more to himself than to her.

She bobs her head in a nod and slowly stands back up. She heads to the door, waiting at the threshold as Melanie rounds the desk and joins her. Basira crosses through and disappears around the corner and Jon waits for Melanie to do the same.

She pauses, much like Basira did, and says, “Good luck,” before walking out.

Jon watches as Melanie closes the door behind her and pretends not to hear as she slides the key into the lock or the click of the lock as he is sealed in the room. There’s a long pause before she walks away but when she does, Jon can’t pretend anymore. He pushes away from the desk, slipping off his chair and crawling into the space beneath the table. It’s a tight fit and Jon has to curl up tightly to fit but there’s something comforting about being in such a small space. He presses his face into his knees and breathes wetly.

He tries to fight against the tidal wave of fear that’s swelling up within him and pushing up and up until it’s everything he can do to stop himself from screaming. He bites his lower lip, not noticing the increasing pressure until there’s blood trickling down his chin. He reaches up to wipe it away, but his hand is trembling too hard to do anything but smear it around. He’d try to control the trembling, but the rest of his body is trembling just as badly. Biting down further, the trickle thickens, an almost tickling sensation making its way down his face. Forcing his jaw to unclench, he draws his teeth away from his lip and probes the cut with his tongue, forcing it open wider. It stings, but the pain of it is comforting. It’s bearable. That’s right, this is nothing.

Jon stops breathing. It’s an act that used to frighten him – further proof of his monstrous nature, of how he woke up wrong – but now it’s comforting. He’d survived so much when he was human but now he’s more. He’s more durable, more knowledgeable, more other. He’s not sure of the full extent of his powers but from what he knows of the other avatars and of himself, he knows this isn’t the end of his growth. He’ll get more powerful. All he needs to do is focus on getting better and then he can become strong enough to stop anyone else dying like Tim and Sasha did. He’s survived the Unknowing, so he can survive going a little hungry.

*

He cannot survive going a little hungry Jon decides later. He’s had two statements delivered to him – one about an arctic expedition and another about a particularly life-like play – but time has blurred together so much Jon isn’t sure whether Basira has kept to her schedule or not. He hasn’t seen her or anyone else and he feels so lonely. It’s quiet, too. Part of it is the isolation but part of it has to be Peter Lukas’ influence. Jon clearly remembers being able to the hear the light tapping of fingers against keyboards and the shuffling of paper from outside when he first got locked in here. As the days had passed, though, the noises had gotten fainter and fainter until they had completely faded into the silence and Jon lost any proof of people existing outside his office. He can’t even hear the quiet buzz of the lights above his head whose noise had always bugged him when he was trying to concentrate.

The tape recorders, too. Despite everything they represent, Jon can’t help but miss the tape recorders. Without interacting with anyone and no new statements, they have no reason to turn on, or to even be in the room with him. They stay though they remain silent and still, not doing anything even when he tries to turn them on. The first time he’d tried and nothing had happened, he’d simply thought they’d run out of batteries. Something had niggled at him, asking why some mystical tape recorders would need batteries when they could appear out of mid-air and never seemed to run out of space, no matter how long he was recording for.

He’d ignored it, desperate for a normal reason why they’d stopped working. Managing to find a single set of spare batteries, he’d pried open the back of one of the recorders and switched them over. It still didn’t turn on. He hated the Eye, he hated what it did to others and to himself, yet Jon couldn’t stop himself from feeling abandoned and betrayed by it. He’d been left to rot in here by people he thought of as friends and now even the monster that had ruined his entire life and did nothing but cause misery had abandoned him too. He remembers throwing the tape recorder at the wall but even when it broke against the edge of the metal cabinets, it barely made any noise. It lay on the floor in pieces, not disappearing, not mending itself, not doing anything.

When they do turn on for the first time since the last statement he got, the whirring of the tape is almost too loud to handle. Jon’s so busy trying to get used to the sudden presence of sound again that he doesn’t notice her enter, only catching the movement of the door shutting behind her. As she moves towards him, every step of her foot sounds like she’s walking on shards of glass, a strange crackly noise. But there’s no glass on the floor just the empty floorboards, the remains of the tape recorder, and Jon. He’s been lying on the floor for ages now, on his back with his hands limply by his side, palms pressed against the floorboards, grounding him where nothing else can. She pauses by his feet, as if unsure what to do, before joining him on the ground in one smooth motion that he tries not to see.

“Hello Helen,” He says into the silence, his voice hoarse from disuse.

“Hello Jon,” She parrots back at him.

“How’ve you been?” He asks dully, not sure if he wants to know the answer.

“I have been but I’ve also not been,” She replies politely.

Jon doesn’t even bother trying to make sense of that, instead just nodding. He doesn’t say anything else and neither does she. He lays there, enjoying the feeling of someone else close to him, someone who doesn’t want to kill him, and breathes. He’s not sure why he’s bothered, he hadn’t breathed since Basira and Melanie took his things, but the steady rhythm makes him feel more alive. It makes him feel more human and that’s important he thinks. Everyone already knows what he’s become and he doubts anyone will forget any time soon but he needs the reminder that he’s still human somewhere deep inside. He’d lost count of the times people had called him some cold, unfeeling monster when he was still human, and if his nature was already inhuman, it only serves to make him feel worse now that the rest of him is too. But he can pretend – he can try – for the others and for himself, too. It doesn’t take much effort to breathe, but it settles Jon and that matters.

It may only matter to him but it does matter. Helen probably doesn’t care. She’s taken to being a monster like a duck to water. He wonders whether she regrets it, becoming what she has. Is she even a ‘she’ anymore? It would be more apt to think of her as an ‘it’ like he had with Michael. It distances him from the monsters and it helps create a sense of other where there he usually only experience an unwilling sort of understanding. But Helen is more than Michael was; he was just using the name of who he once was, but Helen is still Helen Richardson inside. Maybe it’s not as much as it was before, but there is still some of the woman Jon had met inside there. If Jon can still be Jon, Helen can still be Helen. Helen’s a she, Jon decides, for once and for all. No more doubting whether she was or wasn’t.

“I’m sorry.”

He’s still not looking at her but he hears her clothes move and out of the periphery of his vision. He can almost see her turn her head, her hair spreading further across the ground, moving and twisting into odd shapes. He can feel her bright eyes focus on him,

“You hurt me,” She tells him, voice quiet but definitive.

“I know.”

She doesn’t say anything to that and he struggles to collect his thoughts.

“I was becoming a monster and I was scared. I was _so very_ scared. I didn’t want to acknowledge it, that I was losing my humanity, my capacity to love and feel and to be Jon. You were just a reminder of that – proof that I would outlive my humanity and become nothing more than a tool for the Beholding. You were my future,” He pauses.

“You came to me at a very bad time,” He continues, “I was alone and stressed and everyone hated me but that was no excuse to treat you as I did. So, I’m sorry for that. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you when you needed me and I’m sorry for what I said to you.”

Silence fills the room again and panic wells up inside Jon. Not for what Helen could do to him but for fear of not getting her forgiveness. He needs her to forgive him. Not just because he’d been cruel to her but also because of how kind she had been to him. She had saved him, not just from Nikola but also from Michael and Jon doesn’t know whether he’d ever actually thanked her for that; for letting him into her corridors and then letting him back out again.

He almost jumps when he feels something against his hand, which still lays limply by his side. Helen hadn’t moved her hand from where it had mirrored his on the ground almost half a metre away, but her fingers lay on top of his. He almost recoils from the touch. Not because of the way her fingers are sharp with far too many joints but because it’s been too long since someone touched him so gently.

Forcing his body to twist over onto his side so he can face Helen is no easier than it had been the last time he had moved, but something warm and light in his chest makes it feeler, not easier, but more worth the struggle.

Helen looks just the same physically as she had the last time Jon had seen her. Her eyes are far too large with bright purple irises, and her eyelashes are long and thick like wires. Her cheeks are sharp and gaunt, and her curly black hair seems to twist and coil around her face as if alive. When she smiles gently at him, he’s not sure whether he actually sees a second set of teeth and a sharp, pointed tongue but it doesn’t matter because she’s here.

“You hurt me,” She repeats.

Before he can say anything, she continues, “I visited you in hospital. It was odd at first, you being both there and not there, but it became comforting over time. The corridors are mine so it’s strange to think I need to get away from them but I do and when I did I’d visit you. I kept thinking about you,” She laughs and it’s nothing like the high-pitched cackle Michael used to make, “Though it would be sort of hard not to, considering how you were the only other person in the room.”

She blinks now, for the first time since entering the room. Though, to call it a blink is not fully accurate. The purple of her iris bleeds out into the white of her eye, filling it until her entire eye is that vibrant purple before it all slowly draws back into itself like a drained basin to the way it was before. Her whites stay tinted purple though: a pale stain. Her eyes themselves don’t close, instead her eyelashes bend over like a bug’s legs and cross over each other for a moment before straightening again. It’s disconcerting at best and Jon tries not to pull a face.

“I visited your home too. I wanted to understand you better. To understand how you could be so cruel to me yet throw away your life for some random people you’ve never met before and probably never will. I came to understand how, to you, I was nothing but a cruel reminder of the fate which you feared so much. It wasn’t enough to make me forgive you but now that you’ve apologised...” She trails off for a moment before continuing, “I forgive you, Jon.”

For a few moments, Jon can’t breathe. Ever since he’s come back he’s only had people mad at him or ignoring him. It’s almost funny that the one person he’d thought of as a monster is the only person who’s been kind to him. She deserves better than him for a friend, but if she’s decided to forgive him that’s up to her, and the only thing he can do is try not to hurt her again. They’re too alike allow themselves to be pulled apart again. He’d wanted to befriend Helen Richardson but hadn’t wanted to draw her into his world any more than she had already been pulled in. Helen, however, is like him. He doesn’t have as much to fear and he doesn’t have to try to be the man he was before around her. There’s something relieving about that.

“You’re my friend, Helen,” He tells her.

“And you’re mine, too,” She replies easily.

He twists his hand over so he can slip his fingers in between hers. The feeling of her fingers shortening as her arm gets longer is still disorienting but Jon ignores the automatic lurch in his stomach. He’ll have to work on accepting all of Helen’s eccentricities if he’s going to be a better friend to her. He needs to accept that the Helen he’ll be friends with won’t be the same Helen he met. She won’t be human anymore and attempts to seem more so would just mean Helen isn’t being herself. It’ll be hard; none of the other Avatars had been exactly pleasant to him. But, as he holds her hand in his though, it doesn’t seem like it will be too hard. It might just be worth it, too.

He relaxes into the quiet, listening to the strange static that Helen’s presence prompts from the tape recorders and her breathing. An odd sequence of ins and outs that gives Jon a headache – well, a worse one – when he tries to figure its pattern. He forces himself to stop thinking about it and focuses on how, for the first time in weeks, the silence isn’t suffocating.

“You should come with me,” Helen says when she finally breaks the silence.

“I can’t,” He replies, not even trying to mask the exhaustion in his voice.

“Nothing good will come of you staying here,” She argues.

“Yes, but if I stay here, nothing bad will happen to anyone.”

“What about you? Bad things are happening to you here.”

“I can’t hurt people, Helen. I just can’t.”

“As long as you don’t kill them it’s fine. Humans hurt other humans all the time. Besides it’s not like you’re just doing it for fun, you have to.”

“I _can’t_ ,” His tone is desperate as he silently pleads for her to stop pushing the point.

She stops, her entire body going still, even her hair stops twisting. After a moment, the movement starts again, as if it had never stopped but her tone is softer than before.

“Okay,” She says, “But I’m going to visit you whenever I can and I can brings you things. Coffee, books, people, whatever you need. Just call to me and I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

Jon grins, “Coffee sounds like fun. You could mess with the baristas by picking out the oddest flavour combinations and we could rate the taste of them.”

She smiles, too, both sets of teeth on clear display, “Ever tried mango, hazelnut, and peppermint?”

“Lord, no,” He laughs, “It sounds really bad.”

She shrugs, shoulders softening and twisting like putty before suddenly sharpening and snapping back into place, “I like it.”

Falling silent for a moment, Jon worries he’s done something wrong, but then he hears her door open and she sighs.

“I’ve got to go, Jon, but I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

She pats his hand twice before pulling away and dragging herself to her feet. With those same glass-tinkling steps she crosses his office.

“Bye, Helen,” He calls out, his voice still quiet, but stronger than before.

“Bye, Jon,” She replies before closing the door behind her.

It vanishes almost immediately and although the loneliness sinks back into him, he feels a little lighter than before. The hunger is still there but it feels more manageable; he can do this, just for long enough for Basira and the others to come up with a solution for his problem.

*

Helen comes back every once in a while and it’s nice. She’s different from the woman Jon had first met but he doesn’t find himself too sad about that; he’d only know her for a few hours before she went through that door. She’d been nice and Jon had liked her, but he hadn’t known her. He’d known her fear, her complete and utter terror surrounding her time in the corridors. It was so clear that he’d had to take a smoke break after she left. He’d felt guilty about letting her walk through that door a second time but something inside of him had been curious as to whether she’d make it out again. Maybe she’d slip away and disappear back to her mundane life of selling houses and feeding her mum’s cat. She hadn’t. Now she’s irrevocably a part of his world, so he shouldn’t feel bad about talking to her. He does though. Guilty that he hadn’t been able to stop her from going through that door and, despite their reconciliation, he still feels guilty for how he treated her afterwards.

Most of the time he can ignore it but every time she steps into his office, he feels it rise up and push against his chest. He’ll want to vomit but then she’ll smile like she’s actually glad to see him and it wouldn’t matter anymore. He’d swallow it down and push it aside as he smiled back. The first few times had been awkward, she’d been too comfortable as a monster and he wasn’t comfortable enough, but, as time passed he stopped minding as much when she’d tell him how her house tours were going _so well until they went to check out the laundrette, I mean the blueprints already showed them that they didn’t have a laundrette but do they listen?_ And as his disgust with what she did started to lessen, so did the guilt. She may have never planned to be like this, but she didn’t seem that upset anymore; she seemed happy.

It had been a few days since her first visit, and each day she’d come by in both the morning and the evening. She never stayed long – the longest had been a little under half an hour – but Jon appreciates her presence more than she could ever know. A fog had been descending on his mind, his thoughts coming to him slowly, like wading through water, and leave him feeling tired. Whenever Helen appeared, though, the fog seemed to retreat and he would be able think clearly again, feeling more lively in those short conversations than he had in weeks. Jon would like to think it’s Peter’s influence, but he knows that this is just normal human loneliness.

It’s for that reason that Jon never mentions anything to Helen. He never mentions the heavy weight that presses down on his chest when she leaves and the way his thoughts are sometimes too fast and too numerous for him to adequately handle or the way they sometimes come far too slowly, and how he’ll lose a thought before it even blooms, leaving him empty, a gap where a thought should be. Instead, he revels in his humanity. He relishes the pain. It’s a pain he associated with his isolation for weeks before he realises it could be something else.

When he was a child, Jon had slipped on the front steps of his school and broken his wrist. For those first few seconds, he couldn’t imagine anything more painful but then, as he’d forced himself back onto his feet and up the rest of his steps to class, it had faded away in the face of his concern of being marked late by his teacher. Being late had meant a phone call to his grandmother and far too much paperwork for a simple delay of a minute or two. It had taken most of the first class for the pain to abate to something he could ignore; he’d thought he’d been fine. It was only when Jon had pulled out his exercise book and tried to write the date at the top of the page that he’d realised that the pain had never gone away, he was just very good at ignoring it until he got used to it.

Jon thinks that’s what this is. His hunger that had left him so nauseous and in such agony now leaves him feeling empty, without any drive or energy. It feels like he’d gotten better and had gotten over his ‘addiction’, but Jon isn’t convinced it won’t all just come back later, that he hasn’t just adjusted to his new standard of living. Still, it’s better to pretend he’s just feeling down in the dumps like any other bloke who works too much and doesn’t have time for friends. It’s a human affliction, he tells himself, even though a small part of him doubts.

His suspicions are proven when Helen decides to help him. Maybe she would never understand why he enjoyed his isolation, but she understands the hunger in his eyes. She would look at shaking hands and dry, cracked lips and she would never feel disgust or annoyance; she’d pity him. She’d never restricted her feeding of her master, at least not that Jon could tell, but she still knows how he suffers much more than anyone else at the Institute does. She understands the pain that comes from denying something so intrinsic to himself but she hasn’t felt it. She doesn’t truly know it, not like Jon does, but she can guess.

Helen never mentioned anything to him about it, but on the fifth day of her visiting, when she walks into the room, she has a box in her hands. It’s plain cardboard with a slot on the side for a label and a dark brown lid. The label is blank, never used, but Jon still knows what’s inside. How could he not?

Helen doesn’t mention the box she’s brought when she puts it down and lays down beside Jon nor in the following conversation. It’s a short one, only lasting a few minutes before she realises that no matter what interesting stories she tells, his attention will be mostly dedicated to the box. Not even bothering to finish her sentence, Helen lets it trail off into nothing. She rolls over towards him, presses a kiss to his cheek and stands up. He can almost pretend he hadn’t felt her lips sticking to his cheek for a moment too long, in a way a lip-gloss or lipstick would never be able to do. Resisting the urge to check his cheek for a lipstick stain or suction marks, Jon looks up at Helen.

“Thank you,” He says.

It’s the first thing he’s said to her that night and he knows it will be the last. He could hardly force those two words out of his mouth and the very thought of having to talk again is nearly as tiring as it had just been.

Helen nods to him and says, “Of course,” Before walking back through her door.

Even when the door closes behind her, Jon forces himself to wait before he opens the box. If the clock on the wall reflects the same passage of time that the rest of the Archives experiences, then he waits half an hour before succumbing to his urges. It feels much longer. He shuffles over to the box and drags it over to his desk so he can lean against the hard wood side of it. Popping the lid off, he breathes in deeply, savouring the smell of the statements. He picks one off the top and he feels his mouth begin watering. A strange excitement fills him. It’s a good one. Something about the strange footsteps in the snow that had followed a girl home every day throughout the winter months each year. 

As he reaches in to grab it, Jon wonders if he looks at the statements the same way Elias would look at him as he began transforming into the Archivist. It’s a sobering thought and it slows down Jon’s hand as he pulls the statement out of and onto his lap to read. Even as his mind screams at the thought of becoming anything like Elias or what Elias wants him to be, his heart and soul sings to read the statement, to consume, consume, consume. He needs to learn more, he wants to learn more. He needs to understand. He needs to see.

He flips open the manila folder and sees the statement laid before him in all its glory. He lifts it up and checks to see if anyone had conducted any research into it yet. Spotting the neat handwriting of one of Gertrude’s assistants on a yellowed sheet of lined paper is thrilling. _Excellent_.

“Statement of Isabella Colby regarding the unseen creature that would follow her home each winter. Original statement given twelfth –”

Pain. Overwhelming pain. When he’d been a child he’d managed to write the first half of the date before the pain had overwhelmed him. It had been the 19th, if he remembered correctly. Despite his suspicions, Jon had hoped that his hunger had truly been something that he could beat. He’d hoped that it had faded away for good, but, just like when he was a child, he chokes on the date. Every nerve in his body is screaming. He might be, too. He shudders and sucks in a shaky breath. Something seizes within him and with a groan he throws up.

The shirt he’s wearing, a plain black, reveals nothing about what came out of him. Isabella’s statement however, is covered in something thick and red. As he looks at it and takes in how the blood obscures enough of the statement that there’s no chance of him being able to read it, the pain sharpens suddenly. Jon twists to the side and chokes as blood rushes up his throat and trickles out of his mouth and down his chin.

He heaves as the blood just keeps coming. There’s the distant fear that if he doesn’t get rid of the blood that it’ll just keep building up and he’ll drown. He only realises he’s twisted to the wrong side – over the statement box and not on the floorboards – when the pain becomes something much, much worse than anything he’s felt before. He can’t handle it. He slumps weakly over the box as if he can protect them from any more damage. This time, among his flickering vision and the sensation of blood slowly moving down his throat, he knows for a fact that he does scream.

Time is fluid and everchanging. Jon could have been laying there for two minutes or two days. It might not even have passed consistently. A second could have been stretched out for hours and this entire time he’s been here could be but a moment in Jon’s life. He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care to know. The Eye has lost knowledge today and it’s not keen to expose itself to anything that runs the risk of further ruining its knowledge. After so long of not knowing, Jon knows that something as simple as the passage of time is enough to worsen everything he’s feeling. If that is even possible.

Maybe he should. If he found out the time or maybe something else – something bigger – then maybe he would just die. It would be funny. He’s spent all this time moaning about needing statements and in the end it’s a statement that kills him. He could just end it now. No more stress for Basira or Georgie or Martin. They could all start afresh. They could train the next archivist to be better than Jon had been, not that it’s a very high bar to beat. It’s a good idea, maybe the first one he’s had in years.

It’s a shame it’s not going to work though. He tries to lift his head, to grab a statement from the box. There must be at least one left untouched in there. But he can’t. He can’t lift his hand. He can’t move, he can’t do anything but lay there in pain. He shudders occasionally as the blood starts seeping through the statements on the top and down into the next layer. With one final push, Jon manages to lift his hand but it falls back to the ground a second later without the strength to hold it up. It’s nothing like the pain from not reading statements, that had felt human. There’s nothing human about this. Jon can’t be bothered to care about that, though. Human or not, it hurts. So much. He shuts his eyes and gives in, floating in the sensation.

*

He first hears his name, quiet and concerned, being repeated over and over. Then he feels a hand on his face, cupping his cheek. There’s arm around his shoulder and a chest pressed against his back. They’re warm and Jon relaxes into it as much as he can. They must notice because some of the concern disappears the next time his name is called, and instead they seem somewhat impatient.

“Jon,” Insists a familiar voice.

Something cold runs through Jon as he finally places just who it is that’s holding him. He tries to pull away but he doesn’t even have the energy to open his eyes. So, he stays where he is and enjoys the feeling of someone being near him without trying to hurt him. Helen had helped when she visited but the strange fluctuations in her body temperature had prevented Jon from being able to enjoy the experience as much as he had wanted to. None of the others would touch him like this either; Basira and Melanie would sooner just kill him and Georgie’s still mad at him. Who knows what Martin would do.

It’s strange, Jon thinks, missing Martin. He’d spent so much time being annoyed with Martin as a concept – a useless assistant that spent more time playing nice than working – that it took thwarting a potential apocalypse and being in a coma for half a year to realise what Martin the person meant to him. God, Martin was just _so_ _good_ and kind and Jon hates himself for not realising it. He’s not sure when Martin’s kindness stopped being an unnecessary annoyance and started being the highlight of his day. When did his unquestioned loyalty stop being something that Jon was grateful for but still thought of as daft and start being something he relied on? When did his quiet presence by his side start meaning so much to him? He’s not going to do Georgie the disservice of saying that he’s never felt this way before, but he’s not quite sure how he never noticed how much Martin mattered to him. Not that any of it matters anymore. There are so many different reasons why Jon should never even try to tell Martin what he feels but it boils down to this: Martin is good and Jon is anything but.

Even if Jon wasn’t a monster, he’s still a massive asshole and Martin has been the focus of those tendencies for years now. There’s no way anyone would look at Jon, at who he is – what he is – and think that he’s a perfectly good person to love. Even Georgie couldn’t love him and that was back when Jon was the nicest he ever got in his miserable little life. This Jon is alone and bitter and angry. Well, he wishes he was angry. If he’s being honest, he’s mostly just sad. Martin is the opposite of everything Jon is. He’s nice and handsome and people like him. There’s no way someone like Martin would settle for someone like Jon, even if his poetry is truly terrible.

But, as awful as his poetry is, there’s nothing Jon wants more than for Martin to be the one holding him now. He’s sore and tired and he just wants it all to end and he just wants Martin to hold him close and tell him it’ll all be alright. Instead he’s here, a warm body propping him up and wrapped around him and he’s not sure if he’s ever felt colder. He wants to get away. He needs to get away. With a groan, he tries to roll away but he’s still too weak. Barely managing to twist to his side, Jon tries to slap away the hand that’s supporting his head. His slap ends up being little more than a weak caress and Jon pulls a face. It could have come across as affectionate.

“Jon.”

“Elias,” Jon mimics petulantly; he may not be able to get away from him, but Elias has never had the best patience.

“Why did this happen?” His tone is painfully neutral but Jon knows he’s concerned and what does he even do with that?

Opening his eyes, Jon looks up at Elias. He looks pretty bad if Jon’s being honest. Sure, he’s wearing one of his suits but all of Elias’ suits are fitted. This one still looks good on him – a deep blue that brings out his eyes and emphasises the pale blonde of his hair – but it’s slightly baggy, as if Elias had lost weight. His face looks a little narrower too, Jon supposes. There’s stubble on his chin and his hair has been neatly brushed away from his face but with no gel to hold in place a few strand fall over his face. His hands, where they support Jon, feel softer, gentler. He seems more human this way and Jon can pretend, if just for a moment, that this is just a person in Jon’s life being concerned about him. It’s not though and he considers playing dumb or just ignoring the question. Deciding against it, Jon goes for the most succinct answer.

“I haven’t been having any statements.”

“Why not?” It’s a demand for more information and it takes Jon by surprise. He’d thought Elias had been watching him.

As if noticing this, Elias scowls and quickly says, “I’ve been busy, Jon.”

Jon nods – a slight tilt of his head – and replies, “I forced Breekon to stop.”

“Yes, I saw that. I was very impressed, Jon.”

Jon almost preens, pleased by Elias’ fond tone and he feels disgust a moment later. After everything he’s done, Jon still laps up Elias’ praise and approval like nothing’s changed. It’s like he’s that same man who couldn’t stop himself from smiling when Mr. Bouchard had told Jon to call him Elias and then said that he was very impressed by his work ethic. Jon had liked Elias back then, when he was just his friendly boss who would pop in for chats sometimes. He hadn’t really had any friends before Georgie and he hadn’t met anyone since. At the time Jon had been thrilled by how much they had in common despite all their differences but now he just wonders whether that was just another way to manipulate him. He hadn’t worried about any of that back then though, he’d just been excited that he might be making a friend. It was all very casual, he had told himself, but if it had pleased him that Elias wouldn’t stop to talk to the other employees as he would Jon, well, no one else had to know.

“I thought it was too dangerous for me to be out and about until I learnt how to control it.”

“Starving yourself isn’t learning control,” Elias retorts.

“How was I supposed to know that? I thought it was like smoking,” Jon’s voice is steadily getting more shrill as he realises what Elias is saying.

He’s been starving himself. He hasn’t been beating his addiction at all, he’s just been slowly killing himself. If he’d still been human it would have been like smoking. But he’s not. He’d let Basira get into his head and he’d hoped that, despite everything, that it had just been an addiction. But of course he wouldn’t be that lucky. He’s only a monster now, his humanity having been slowly destroyed by months of sleeping and by years of working in this institute. Him denying it anymore was pointless, he’d never have stopped being what he is. There was never any hope of him staying human, all he’s been doing is pretending he isn’t a monster like the other avatars – like Elias. 

“You’re smarter than that.”

“I’d hoped…” Jon trails off.

The hand supporting his head, strokes through his hair and it’s comforting. Those hands that had so brutally killed Jurgen Leitner, are gentle against the back of his head, slowly detangling the long strands of matted hair. Jon hadn’t bothered brushing his hair since the third or four day he’d been in his office. He’d tied it up again when it got too messy but his arms had become too weak to tie it up by the second week so he’d ended up just leaving his hair loose around his shoulders. He’d ignored it as it slowly got more and more messy, knots developing. He hadn’t cared at the time but now that Elias is slowly brushing them out he feels ashamed. Jon tries to fight the rising flush to his cheeks, hoping that Elias isn’t looking. He isn’t. His gaze distant as he peers over Jon’s head, the motion of his hand more automatic than anything.

“I think I should reconsider my strategy,” Elias murmurs under his breath. He doesn’t sound like he’s talking to Jon.

He falls silent and Jon can’t help but panic, his tired mind conjuring up any number of different ‘strategies’ that Elias could use to convince Jon to do whatever it is that Elias wants. None of them are nice. It takes only half a minute or so for Elias to make up his mind but it feels like an eternity.

“I could help you, Jon,” Elias addresses him, “If you let me.”

“And why would I do that?” Jon replies, bitterly.

Elias is silent for a moment before slowly saying, as if he’s not fully sure of what he’s promising, “I’ll let the others go.”

Jon’s eyes go wide, “Seriously?”

“I promise.” Elias swears, his voice soft and sincere.

Nothing good will come out this. Jon knows that for a fact. He knows Elias and even if he didn’t, he knows that helping some primordial fear entity is never going to be a good thing. But he’s tried to be good and stay human and that’s done nothing for him. No matter how much he tries, he’s never human enough and nothing he’s done has protected the people he cares about. He’s already lost Tim and Sasha and even Daisy, but he still has people he cares about. Everyone is in danger, always, and if Jon could help them, just this once, if he could finally do something right, then maybe, it wouldn’t be that much of a loss. He couldn’t help his friends when he was human, but he’d managed to stop Breekon when he embraced his powers.

He needs to learn control, he needs to learn how to control his powers so he can help people. He’s been useless thus far but if he plays his cards right, Elias can teach him all he needs to know and he can finally be strong enough to stand against the other entities. He could stop anyone else from having to die. Even if Elias doesn’t hold up his side of the promise, Jon might become strong enough to actually keep them safe. _It’s worth it_ , he thinks, _and it’s not like he’s doing anything else._ He has nothing left to lose when he’s already lost his humanity.

“… Fine.”

Every part of Jon screams at him, telling him that he’s making the wrong decision but if it means Melanie, Basira and Martin will get out of here safely, then he’ll have to put up with it. Whatever ‘it’ is. Besides, despite all of Elias’ manipulations he’s only wanted to groom Jon into something perfect for his deity. It means Jon won’t be killed any time soon, which is good, but it also means he’ll be playing along with whatever Elias wants. He hasn’t mentioned anything of his long-term plans, but that just means Jon has more time to prepare to stop whatever he is wanting to do.

Limply tilting his head up to face Elias, Jon peers up at him.

“Fine,” He repeats, looking at the absolute delight that graces Elias’ face.

“Perfect,” Elias croons.

Jon feels like throwing up, revulsion at what he’s done and satisfaction at making Elias happy merging into something ugly inside him.

“Wait,” He calls and Elias’ face freezes.

“Breekon mentioned that Daisy could still be alive,” The words fall out of Jon’s mouth quickly, afraid Elias won’t bother listening to him.

Eyes fixed on him, Jon watches a series of complex emotions flicking across Elias’ face as he takes in what Jon’s just told him. His face goes blank.

With a sigh, Elias says, “I can help you become strong enough to save her as well.”

His tone makes it sound as if he’s doing Jon a favour but Jon knows there has to be something more to it than that. But then again, Jon’s time with Nikola had been viewed as nothing but a learning experience for him, so why wouldn’t Elias be willing to let him die in the Buried?

“That is, if she isn’t dead already,” Elias continues, “It _has_ been six months after all.”

Breekon had said that Daisy was in the coffin but he’d made no mention of whether she was still alive. Could she have survived six months with nothing but dirt and soil and fear? _She’s strong_ , Jon tells himself, _brave and determined_. A little dirt wouldn’t stop her from getting back to Basira. No way. But six months was still a _very_ long time to be down there.

“And if she is, she’ll be let go, too?”

Elias smiles at him, tight and impatient, “Yes.”

“Okay then,” Jon nods, “I promise.”

“What do you promise?”

“I promise to be your Archivist,” Jon tries to make his voice sound as irritable as he can, to mask the fear that’s welling up within him. He can’t go back now.

“I’m honoured,” Elias doesn’t even bother trying to sound sarcastic, instead his calm voice barely masks his ecstasy.

“Now, we’d better get going before the police notice I’m gone and notify Basira or Melanie.”

Jon scrunches his nose, he hadn’t thought about the two women who’d been trapped in here with him. How were they going to find out they weren’t still forced to stay at the Archives? How would they take it? Would they be happy to be free or would they be mad yet another choice had been taken away from them? Would they see him doing this as a selfless gesture to help those he loves or would they just think he’s taking the easy way out?

Basira had been kind but he knows she wouldn’t hesitate to put him down if she thought he was straying from their path and Melanie is basically salivating for an opportunity to rip him apart. It had previously terrified him that they would so easily kill him but now it’s comforting; If Elias somehow manipulates Jon into helping him, he knows they won’t hesitate to do what’s necessary.

A finger taps at his cheek, and Jon focuses on the man above him.

“Jon,” Elias chides, “I’m the only person who matters now. You and I, we’re going to bring about something _spectacular_.”

Jon says nothing. There’s nothing left to say. As if understanding this, Elias smiles at Jon, and it’s the same smile he’d been shown when he first accepted the job as the Archivist: proud but mostly anticipatory. Elias’ gaze flickers away after a moment but Jon keeps watching. This will probably be the last time he’s in his office for a very long time but he can’t draw his eyes away from Elias. He’s his future after all. Well, his future until Jon learns enough to save Daisy and stop any of the rituals from taking place. But until then, Elias is right, it’s just going to be the two of them. With a sigh, Jon closes his eyes, relaxing back into Elias’ arms.

He beings to move beneath Jon, likely preparing to stand up. Elias’ grip loosens around him for a moment, and Jon feels himself slipping onto the floor. He quickly tightens his grasp though, as if noticing that Jon wouldn’t be able to lift himself up. Heaving a sigh, Jon feels Elias start to shuffle beneath him. The hand on his back slips down to his knees and the other slips down to his upper back. His head lolling back, Jon contemplates whether complaining would fix the situation or whether Elias would simply dump him on the floor. Before he makes up his mind, Elias is beginning to stand up and _oh shit_. Jon clutches onto Elias shirt as he’s suddenly being lifted up. _Of course he’s strong_ , Jon laments as Elias starts carrying him out of his office.

It’s empty outside for once, and Elias calmly walks down the hallway like Jon’s weight is nothing in his arms. It’s comforting, Jon realises, the gentle swing from side to side. The repetitive motion grounding him in this moment and stopping him from retreating into himself again. There’s something else, too. Something else keeping him grounded in the moment. Jon wonders for a moment before realising that the Elias’ warmth isn’t just physical, it’s also helping to alleviate his pain. Was it helping from the start or did it only begin when Jon gave into Elias’ plans?

It doesn’t matter anymore. None of it does. All that matters is that he learns how to control himself so he can properly protect whichever poor sods get saddled with the archival assistant job next. Basira, Martin, and Melanie, they should all be safe now. Daisy might be alive, but she’s more likely to be dead. It’s sobering, the thought that he’s the only one left, the thought that there’s no one left to keep him wanting to be human. If there’s no one left, there’s no point in pretending any more. Jon’s a proper monster now and no amount of avoiding statements is going to stop that from being true, so why bother? He won’t. Jon was hungry, but the Archivist aches, he starves, and he won’t restrict himself again.

**Author's Note:**

> waddup my friends. feel free to hit me up at my tumblr, I'm neverdoingmuch if you wanna talk about this fic or if you want updates on my next tma fic which is gonna be wayyy bigger than this. (;  
> idk dudes,, if you got this far, i love you <3 keep up the good work.


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